When the proposal to confer
self-government upon the Australian colonies was being considered in 1849
the Committee of Trade and Plantations, to which Earl Grey referred the
subject, recommended that, in addition to establishing Legislatures in the
various colonies, the governor-General should have power to convince a body
to be called the General Assembly of Australia. It was to consist of a
single House, named the House of Delegates, whose members were to be
elected, not by the people but by the Parliaments; and it was to have
certain powers entrusted to it affecting the common interests of all
Australia. It was to take charge of customs and excise, postal business,
roads and railways, lighthouses, weights and measures; it was to set up a
general Supreme Court to act as a court of appeal from colonial courts; and
it was to have power to make laws on any other subject which might be
referred to it by the Parliaments of all the colonies. Not a word was said
about defence; that was to remain an Imperial concern.

Earl Grey adopted this idea, and
endeavoured to carry it out in the measure of self-government which he
submitted to the Imperial Parliament in 1850. But the time was not opportune
for a movement towards federation. Neither in Australia nor in England were
the clauses 0popular. Grey made no strong fight for them, and they were
struck out by the House of Lords. There was much that was narrow,
unsympathetic, and marked by the caste-prejudice of the aristocratic Whig in
the colonial policy of Earl Grey, though he wrote two substantial volumes to
prove to posterity what a very enlightened policy it was. Yet in this
particular he - or the committee whose ideas he adopted - showed a true
perception of the inevitable tendencies of Australian politics. Her were
five separate communities - six when Queensland was separated from New South
Wales - all of British origin, all populated principally by British people,
all speaking the same language, all living under similar systems of
government. Were they to grow up as foreign nations, jealous of each other,
pursuing separate and often antagonistic policies? Or were they to recognize
that their place in the sun, their strength in resistance, their trade,
wealth, and public convenience would be enormously increased if they pooled
their powers in certain respects and presented a united front to the world?
Why should not the latter alternative be chosen? The people of the
Australian colonies were not different from each other, as Frenchmen were
different from Germans, or Russians from Spaniards, or Italians from Swedes.
The fact that one Australian colonist had a sheep-run in New south Wales,
that another grew wheat in South Australia, and that another was a miner in
Victoria, made no radical difference in their disposition. The historical
factors which make distinct nationalities were not at work here. A river
boundary or a degree of longitude did not covert people of common origin
into separate nations. It might have worked out so in the course of two or
three centuries, but not in less than one. And even tendencies in that
direction were a misfortune. there were enough causes of racial discord in
the old world; there was no need to introduce them in the new.

But time was required for the
federal idea to germinate and grow. It could not be made to sprout by an Act
of Parliament. The Australian people had to learn for themselves how much
they lost by disunion. they had to become conscious of the weakening offset
of particularist aims. They had to be taught by events that though it was
quite a good and an honourable thing to be a Tasmanian or a Queenslander, it
was a very much finer, prouder thing, and one that signifies very much the
lesson upon their minds. the slippery Bismarckian trick in new Guinea was
one of them. Questions of common interest frequently arose, and for a few
years it was sought to deal with them by means of inter-colonial
conferences. It occurred to Henry Parkes that there ought to be some
permanent machinery for the purpose; and in 1883, when a cluster of subjects
of urgent importance had to be considered, his suggestion, made two years
previously, for the creation of a Federal Council was put into concrete
shape by Samuel Griffith, the Queensland Premier. A bill to authorize the
establishment of such a Council was passed by the Imperial parliament in
1885. It gave power to the six Australian colonies, as well as New Zealand
and Fiji, to pass Acts enabling the colonies to send two representatives
each. Fiji sent her representatives to the first meeting of the federal
Council, held in 1886, but afterwards dropped out, New Zealand never
participated.

Much graver was the defection of
New South Wales. As Parkes first promulgated the idea of establishing such a
Council, his action in afterwards declining to recommend New South Wales to
have anything to do with it was viewed by others as a breach of faith.
Parkes was a statesman of large views, but he was also, as every successful
leader under a parliamentary system must be, a wily politician with a quick
eye to party advantage and the popularity of a project. The Federal Council
scheme had not won popularity in New South Wales. Parkes explained that he
afterwards came to the conclusion that 'the body proposed to be created
would not succeed,' and that it would 'impede the way for a sure and solid
federation.' In truth the Federal Council did not impede the achievement of
federation, nor was there any reason why it should. But the abstention of
the oldest and strongest colony certainly impeded the work of the Council.
Its transactions lacked full authority because they were not those of the
representatives of all Australia. Its legislative power was slight,
extending only to a few questions, and even as to these it had no executive
capacity and no authority to raise revenue. It could legislate on
quarantine, or the influx of criminals, but any laws which it might make
could only be carried out by the Governments of the colonies, by their own
machinery and in their own way. The Federal Council could not order a single
policeman to do anything, nor could it send a single shilling on anything,
nor tax any Australian citizen to the extent of a penny stamp. Yes its
meetings, which occurred every two years, did all attention to matters of
general Australian interest, its debates were on a high level, and the
personnel was always distinguished.

Parkes, however, genuinely
desired to see the federation of Australia, and when again he set himself to
the task he performed noble work for the country. He was in the last quarter
of the nineteenth century by far the most picturesque and commanding figure
in Australian politics. Very tall and strong-framed, with a great leonine
head, maned and bearded white, resting on massive bowed shoulders, his
presence arrested attention in any gathering; and when he spoke, in a thin
penetrating voice, and with slow, deliberate choice of words, his tongue was
gifted with the power to move multitudes and to convince while it charmed.
His origin was of the humblest. As a lad in his native Warwickshire, the son
of a very poor labourer, he had worked on a rope-walk for fourpence a day,
and had groaned under the blows of a brutal master in a brick-yard. He had
shivered in threadbare shreds as a stone-breaker on the highway, and endured
the rigours of an immigrant ship. but always the soul of the man burned
bright. In the midst of his poverty he read and thought and wrote, teaching
himself and learning to love the fine things in literature with a passion
that was never dimmed down to the last days of his very long life. His
little book of Immigrant's Home Letters reveals the struggles and the
aspirations of his early days in Australia, whither he came in 1839. His
political advancement in New South Wales began with the inauguration of
responsible government, and his career extended till Australia was on the
threshold of national life under a federal constitution.

Parkes reopened the federal
question in 1889. Politicians in other colonies with whom he communicated
were still annoyed with him because they thought he had not treated the
Federal Council fairly, and he derived at first little satisfaction from
endeavours to enlist them in a federal movement under his leadership. but he
persisted, and at length succeeded in bringing together a conference of
ministers (1890) to consider means of preparing a constitution. This
conference resulted in the holding of the first Australasian Federal
Convention, in Sydney, in 1891. Its members were chosen from the Parliaments
of the colonies, and they were representative of the best political
intelligence Australia had at her command at the time. The Convention of
1891 prepared the first draft constitution; a document which, though not
finally adopted, was really the basis of the work of the later Convention,
and therefore of the constitution of Australia as it came into being. The
ideas embodied in it were discussed to the open Convention, but the drafting
of the clauses was the work of a small committee consisting of Samuel
Griffith, afterwards Chief Justice of Australia, Edmund Barton, afterwards
Prime Minister, Inglis Clarke, afterwards a Tasmanian Judge, and Charles
Cameron Kingston, a master hand at legislative drafting, who was afterwards
a distinguished minister of the Commonwealth.

The constitution so prepared had
to be adopted by the people of the colonies, the intention being that if it
were accepted by any three of them it should be passed as an act of the
Imperial parliament, and become law. but New South Wales again proved to be
an obstacle to union. Parkes had to encounter strong opposition in his own
Parliament, where a party led by G. H. Reid - who had not been a member of
the Convention - condemned it as the work of 'the great ambitious statesmen
of Australia,' as insufficiently democratic in structure, and as being
especially objectionable in the clauses affecting finance and trade. There
was a feeling in Parkes's own Cabinet against federation on the terms
proposed, whilst in the country the opposition seemed likely to be
formidable. After testing the opinion of Parliament, therefore, Parkes did
not proceed with the bill. In the other colonies it was deemed to be useless
to take action unless there were a reasonable probability of New South Wales
forming part of the federation, and, failing a lead from Parkes, nothing was
done. The work of the 1891 Convention seemed, therefore, to have resulted in
failure. Parkes's period of leadership was over, and he died in 1895. The
new chief of the federal party in New South Wales was Edmund Barton, then in
the ripeness of his great powers, a constructive statesman of wide grasp and
deep learning who had determined to make this the main purpose of his
political life.

The federal movement was soon to
be transferred to another arena - that in which the power of a democracy
resides., Popular leagues were formed to advance the common cause; and at a
conference of such bodies held at Corowa in 1895 a new plan of campaign was
adopted at the suggestion of John Quick, a delegate of the Bendigo Federal
League. His guiding idea was that a fresh impetus towards federation should
emanate directly from the people; that a constitution should be drafted by a
convention elected directly by the people; that the constitution when
drafted should be submitted to the people for acceptance or rejection; and
that, if it were accepted in two or more colonies, it should be passed by
the Imperial Parliament and become law. The movement was to be popular in
origin and directly dependent upon popular control throughout. From the
adoption of this scheme in 1893 dates the irresistible march of the federal
movement to victory. Jealousies, personal ambitions, particularist
interests, the tinkering pettiness of party manoeuvring, might sprog the
wheels for a while, but there could no longer be more than temporary
hindrances. To the Convention of 1897-9, which prepared the instrument that
became the constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia, named ten
representatives of each colony except Queensland, whose Parliament did not
pass the Enabling Bill for the election of delegates. The ten from each of
the other colonies were elected directly by the people, except the
representatives of Western Australia. The Parliament of that State feared to
adopt the method of popular election, because the gold-fields population was
as overwhelmingly large that it would have swamped the voting power of the
agricultural portion, which, under the franchise then in force, dominated
the Legislature. Consequently, the ten representatives from Western
Australia were chosen by the Parliament, and there was not amongst them one
who could authoritatively voice the view of the gold-fields, where the
federal feeling was very strong.

The Convention held three
sessions - in Adelaide, Sydney, and Melbourne. In personnel it was the most
richly endowed assemblage of political ability which had ever been brought
together in Australia. Griffith now occupied one of the 'seats above the
thunder,' as Chief Justice of Queensland; but the method of popular election
had secured the inclusion of nearly every other man who on grounds of
experience, character, weight in leadership and personal distinction,
counted for very much in the politics of the time. The problem of arranging
for the surrender by a group of self-governing States, of a large part of
their independence and powers to a newly created Government erected above
them is one of peculiar complexity. Rarely has it been achieved except under
external pressure, or the menace of internal disruption. The federation of
the United States of America was born of revolutionary warfare and the grave
prospect of life that would accrue from disunion. built there were no such
impulsions in Australia. The country had never known war. It was safe from
outside aggression, protected by the bulwarks of the Imperial Navy. It had
never endured rebellion, or any disturbance that could not be overcome by a
handful of soldiers and policemen. It was brought to federation by good
reason and sound political appreciation of the disabilities of disunion. The
success of the federal movement was the fruit of popular education and of
the experience of a democracy in thinking out and settling its own problems.
A celebrated Imperial statesman in the House of Commons spoke of the
constitution drafted by the Convention as 'a monument of legislative
competency.' It owed nothing to the guidance of any masters from outside,
wise in affairs of State and cunning in the fashioning of laws. The
Australian democracy chose its own men from its own ranks, and set them to
build for it a constitutional house to dwell in. Nearly all the leaders of
the Convention were native born, and had been schooled in their own land.
All were of British origin. Amongst the fifty names of the members, not one
is of foreign derivation.

THE CONSTITUTION

The task of the Convention was made easier by
having the draft of 1891 as a model; add a comparison between the
Constitution which it prepared and its predecessor shows both general
resemblance and striking differences. Substantially the framework of the new
edifice followed the lines laid down six years before. The departures lay in
the widening of scope and the liberalizing of powers. The main problem was
to engraft a federal system upon responsible government after the familiar
British pattern; which looks easy now that it has been done, but which
appeared to be so exceedingly difficult to those who first attempted it that
one who sat in both conventions considered that 'either responsible
government would kill federation or federation would kill responsible
government.' The Commonwealth of Australia has not been impaled on either
horn of the dilemma, but has successfully worked a system of federal
government quite novel in design. Very learned men were engaged in this work
of constitution building, and the student who examines the reports of the
debated will see that every example of federation known to history had been
studied by them. One distinguished man, a little hastily perhaps, or because
it sounded well, said, in urging that exclusively British forms of
government were best adapted to Australian conditions, 'As I do not wish my
boots to be made in Germany, so I do not want my constitution to be made in
Switzerland.' Quickly came the retort: 'I want my boots made where I find
they fit me best.' The whole course of human experience was available, and
the framers of the Constitution were ready to learn from every source. But
certainly they did wish to retain the mode of constitutional government
which the Australian people understood, if it would work under a true
federal scheme.

Australia consisted of six separate States, each
endowed with complete self-government under the Crown. Not one of them need
give up a shred of its independence unless it chose to do so. but in order
that there might be a federation at all, these six independent States had to
agree to surrender to the new supreme government which it was proposed to
establish certain of their powers. When the Dominion of Canada was formed in
1867, the provincial Governments were made subordinate to the new central
Government. The provincial governors in Canada under the Dominion
Constitution are appointed by the Dominion Government; and if the provincial
parliaments pass laws of which the Dominion government disapproves, it can
disallow them. But the Australian States, in their pride of independence,
were not content to agree to a union on those lines. Instead of creating a
central, supreme Government, which should take the powers it needed and
leave the remainder to the States, they desired to rant to the Federal
Government the powers which they chose to surrender, to define them in
strict terms, and to retain the remainder in their own hands. They would be
the granters of powers, not the recipients of such powers as the central
Government did not desire to exercise.

The United States form of Federation was more to
the taste of the Convention than the Canadian form. There the central
Government exercises certain defined powers and cannot go beyond them. If it
does, its action is illegal, and will be declared to be so by the Supreme
Court of the United States. A constitution somewhat after that pattern was
what Australia required, except for one very important difference. In the
United States there is not what is known as responsible government; and
Australia wanted that also. The members of the President's Cabinet do not
sit in congress. They are responsible to him. congress makes the laws, and
the Executive - the President and his ministers - enforce them. But if
Congress is not satisfied with the way the ministers do their work, it
cannot turn them out. It can grumble, but cannot interfere. they are
independent of parliamentary control. Australia wanted to have a federal
Parliament in which ministers would sit, where they could be criticized face
to face, where questions could be put to them, here they could be turned out
of office if their policy or their administration did not satisfy the
majority. So that briefly stated, Australia wanted a form of government like
that of the United States as far as regarded the strict limitation of its
powers, but like the British system in respect to the responsibility of
ministers to Parliament.

The Constitution was therefore made to provide that
no minister shall hold office for longer than three months unless he be a
member of Parliament. If a Government wishes to appoint a certain man as a
minister, he must obtain a seat in Parliament. If no constituency will elect
him, he cannot remain a minister. In order to protect the rights of the
States, the constitution set u a house of legislature called the Senate, to
consist of six members from each State. This gave to Tasmania, with its
small population, exactly the same representation in the Senate as New South
Wales, with the comparatively large population, and might in that regard
seem to be unfair. But the idea was to enable the less populous States to
safeguard their interests if they should ever come into conflict with those
of the more thickly populated States. It was considered that if there were
only one house of legislature, elected on the principle of one member to a
given number of electors, the smaller States would be in danger of being
swamped. If, for example, an issue particular affecting Tasmania were in
question, and on a population basis she had only five representatives,
whilst New South Wales had twenty-seven, she might, it was feared, suffer
an injustice. But that would not be likely to occur if in the Senate all the
States were on an equality. The Senate therefore was not an 'upper house,'
like the House of Lords, or a House of nominated members, or of members
elected on a restricted franchise like a Legislative Council, but was a
States House.

The second legislative chamber which the
Constitution established was called the House of Representative, and was to
consist of members chosen directly by the people on the basis of electoral
equality - each elector in each State having the same voting power as his
fellow, and no more. there were to be at least twice as many representatives
as there were senators, and each State was to be allotted so many, according
to population. No elector was to have more than one vote. In the section
defining the right of electors there were words which ensured that no
elector who had acquired the right to vote in a state 'shall be prevented by
any law of the Commonwealth from voting at elections for either House of the
Parliament of the Commonwealth.' Those words were inserted because in South
Australia women were enfranchised, and the members of the Convention from
that State desired to ensure that the right to vote should not be taken away
from them under the federal Constitution. The insertion of the words
virtually ensured the extension of the franchise to women throughout
Australia, because, it being obviously desirable that the franchise would be
uniform, the only way of securing uniformity was to give to all women the
same electoral status as was enjoyed by those in South Australia.

Experience of disagreements between two legislative
houses had been so unpleasant in Australia, that the framers of the
constitution inserted special provisions to remove deadlocks. they also
provided for setting up a High Court, invested not only with jurisdiction to
hear appeals from state courts, but also to act as the sole interpreter of
the Constitution. If a federal law was alleged to impinge upon the powers of
the States, or if a state law interfered in a matter which was within the
federal scope, the High Court alone was to have authority to prevent the
encroachment. Surmounting the federal edifice was placed a Governor-General,
appointed by the Crown. Stated in summary form, the federal structure
consisted of (a) a House of Representatives, elected on a wide franchise,
one elector exercising one vote and no more; (b) a Senate in which the
States had equality of representation; (c) the Executive, consisting
necessarily of members of Parliament; (ed) the High Court, the sole
authorized interpreter of the Constitution; (e) the governor-General,
representing the Sovereign. The powers entrusted to the Federal Government
were defined in thirty-seven paragraphs of section 52 of the Constitution.
Their range was great, covering defence, posts and telegraphs, navigation,
customs and excise, trade and commerce with other countries and among the
States, currency, census and statistics, marriage and divorce, banking,
insurance, weights and measure, immigration and emigration, copyright,
fisheries, quarantine, naturalization, external affairs and treaties, the
relations of the Commonwealth with the islands of the Pacific, conciliation
and arbitration for the prevention and settlement of industrial disputes
extending beyond the limits of any one State. On all these highly important
subjects, and some others of lesser consequence, the Commonwealth had power
to legislate, and whenever it exercised that power its laws were to override
state laws. Thus, if the Commonwealth passed a new marriage law, all state
marriage laws would at once cease to have validity.

The word 'Commonwealth' was first suggested as a
name for the union of the Australian States by Henry Parkes, in the
constitutional committee of the 1891 Convention - though that fact is not
disclosed by the reported debates. When the suggestion was made it was
rejected; but the name was afterwards formally proposed by Alfred Deakin,
one of the Victorian delegates, and carried in the committee by the very
narrow majority alone. When the matter came before the full Convention in
the text of the draft bill, strong exception was taken to it. To some the
word recalled the grim iconoclasts of the Cromwellian revolution-' take away
that bauble' - 'paint me warts and all' - Ironsides and cropped polls - and
such upsettings as made nervous politicians blink! but the more it was
thought about the better it sounded; especially after the scholarly
eloquence of Edmund Barton had shown what a classic English word it was.
Then the Convention adopted it by twenty-six votes to thirteen. When the
1897-8 convention was called together, the name had so much taken possession
of the popular mind that none other would do. Only one member took exception
of it then, but he could find no support for his objection. 'Commonwealth,'
said Barton, 'is the grandest and most stately name by which a great
association of self-governing people can be characterized'; and it remained
in the title as 'an act to constitute the Commonwealth of Australia.'

The history of the Constitution between the time
when it left the hands of its framers in March 1898 and its enactment as a
statute of the Imperial Parliament in July 1900 is full of interest. This,
indeed, was the critical period of Australian federal history. Into those
twenty-eight months were crowded many strange political adventures and a
whirl of excitement, including some acrobatic feats. The procedure laid down
in the Enabling Acts which had been passed by the States, and under which
the convention had done its work, was that after the constitution had been
drafted it should be submitted to the people, and that it must, to ensure
acceptance, receive a minimum number of affirmative votes in each State. The
minimum required in New South Wales was 50,000. but after the convention had
prepared the bill, a professed enemy of federation in the New South Wales
Parliament introduced a bill to make the minimum 120,000. It was well known
that such a number of affirmative votes could not be recorded. The clear
intention was to prevent the Constitution becoming law. Reid, the Premier,
objected to the 120,000 minimum, but himself suggested raising it to 80,000;
a figure which was sufficient to make the fate of the measure insecure.

Reid's object was to bring about a reconsideration
of the bill in several important particulars. He disliked the financial
clauses, and he especially objected to the clause which provided that 'the
seat of government shall be determined by the Parliament.' A large body of
opinion in Sydney felt that the capital of the Commonwealth ought to be in
New South Wales. That was the oldest State of the group, and was also the
wealthiest and most populous. Reid was not only impressed by this argument,
which was very vociferously urged in Sydney, but was also so trenchant in
his criticism of other provisions that nearly the whole of the first public
speech in which he uttered them was a sustained argument for the rejection
of the Constitution by the people of New South Wales. Much to the surprise
of those who heard it, however, he concluded by saying that,
notwithstanding all the defects he had pointed out, and though he could not
take up the bill with enthusiasm, still he could not 'become a deserter from
the cause,' and regarded it as his duty to Australia to record his vote in favour of it.

Reid's attitude bewildered many and angered more.
It led the Sydney Bulletin to define it as a 'Yes-No' attitude - a term
which figured largely in the controversy of the period, and found its way
into the dictionary. but all leading politicians have to get accustomed to
nicknames and tags. They are rarely so injurious so those who invent them
suppose them to be. It is always dangerous for a political leader to make
distinctions which appear to be subtle, but Reid's difficulty can be
appreciated by those who survey the situation in a calmer mood than the
fierce party frenzy of the day allowed. He conceived that he had a divided
duty; to the convention of which he had been a member and the bill which was
its work on the one hand, and to the assertive body of public opinion in the
State of which he was the Premier, on the other. But his adverse criticism
made it impossible to secure the requisite 80,000 affirmative votes, and
though there was a majori8ty for federation on the terms of the bill in New
South Wales - there were 71,595 votes for an 66,228 against it - the same of
union was for the time thwarted. In Victoria, South Australia, and Tasmania
there were overwhelmingly large favourable majorities. In Western Australia
the obligation to submit the bill to a referendum had not been assumed by
the Government.

It would have been legally possible for the three
States which had adopted the Constitution to federate under it by the
process of petitioning the Crown to submit it to the Imperial Parliament.
But federation without New South Wales would have been absurd, and the three
Governments felt that a patient policy was the better one. The question was:
What amendments would satisfy Reid and his Sydney supporters? Their attitude
was defined late in 1898. The Victorian Premier, George Turner, thereupon
summoned a conference of State Premiers to meet in Melbourne, when, to the
satisfaction of all Australia, it was joined by the Queensland Premier, J.
R. Dickson, whose presence was a guarantee that the sixth State of the group
was now prepared to co-operate. five amendments were prepared by the
conference. Three were financial, a fourth related to the power of the
Federal parliament to alter the boundaries of States, and the fifth was the
alteration which was designed to placate the local feelings of Reid's Sydney
supporters. Instead of leaving to the Federal Parliament unrestricted power
to determine where the capital of the Commonwealth should be, it provided
that, while the Parliament should sit in Melbourne, and the seat of
government should be there pending the building of a federal capital, the
permanent home of the Commonwealth Government should be within territory to
be 'granted to or acquired by the Commonwealth,' but must be' in the State
of anew South Wales, and be distant not less than one hundred miles from
Sydney.'

These amendments made all the difference between
success and failure. At a second referendum, held in June 1890, there were
107,420 affirmative and 82,741 negative votes in New South Wales. A
comparison between the voting in 1898 and 1899 is instructive. It shows an
increase of federal feeling in all the States in which there were referendum
polls in both years. Queensland did not vote in 1898, and Western Australia,
whose Government was angling for special financial terms, did not join the
federation till after the bill had been passed by the Imperial Parliament.

The attitude of Western Australia was different
from that of any other State. The gold discoveries had attracted thither
thousands of men from other parts of Australia. they were called 'T'othersiders'
by the old colonists, who, if not opponents of federation on any terms,
demanded that certain amendments should be made in the Constitution. The
chief amendments they wanted were a guarantee that the Federal Government,
when established, would construct a transcontinental railway connecting
Western Australia with the eastern States, and permission for Western
Australia to impose her own customs and excise duties for a period of five
years after a federal tariff was brought into force. But the gold-fields
po9pulation were federationists almost to a man. They had certain grievances
against the Western Australian Government, which had refused to grant them
franchise rights on an equality with the inhabitants of the rest of the
State. When they demanded that the whole of the people of Western Australia
should be given an opportunity of expressing an opinion on the federation
issue by means of a referendum, their petition was rejected by both houses
of the Parliament. The gold-fields people then determined, 'as all other
constitutional means have been tried and failed,' to petition the Queen for
the separation of the gold-fields from the rest of Western Australia, to
establish a separate government there, and thus to enable the new State so
created to become part of the Australian Commonwealth.

In view of the strength of this separation
movement, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Chamberlain, telegraphed
to the Governor of Western Australia surging that his ministers should 'take
into consideration the fact of the agitation by the federal party,
especially on the gold-fields,' and intimating that it appeared to him to
be' of the utmost importance of the future of Western Australia to join at
once.' this was a clear hint to the Western Australian Government that if
they mentioned to stand aloof, the petition from the gold-fields might be
acted upon by the Imperial government. Sir John Forrest and his ministers
thereupon came to the conclusion that the risk of separation was too high a
prize to pay for continued opposition to the demand for joining the
Federation. They therefore took steps to enable the people of Western
Australia to express their opinion, with the result that, as recorded above,
the large majority of 25,109 out of 44,800 voted in favour of the acceptance
of the Commonwealth Bill.

The Commonwealth Bill having thus been accepted by
the people of Australia, it was necessary for it to be passed by the
Imperial Parliament. But now again difficulties arose. The bill, in
conferring upon the High Court exclusive jurisdiction in cases involving the
interpretation of the Constitution, also gave power to the Federal
Parliament to make laws limiting the matters of law in which appeals might
be made to the Privy council, the highest court of appeal in the Empire. the
English law officers objected to this limiting power being conferred upon
the Parliament. That the High Court should (unless it chose to give special
leave to appeal to the Privy Council) be the sole interpreter of the
Constitution, and of the limits of the powers of the Commonwealth and of the
States, was conceded. But objection was made to restricting the right of
citizens to appeal to the highest Imperial tribunal on several grounds, two
of which were of broad significance - first, that the Privy Council was a
bond between various parts of the Empire which it should be the aim of
Imperial policy to strengthen rather than to weaken; and, secondly, that the
Privy council ensured uniformity in the interpretation of the law throughout
the Empire on matters of commercial and Imperial concern.

The Imperial Government did not think that so
sweeping a change should be made unless they were satisfied that the demand
for it was one 'that has behind it the whole force of Australian opinion.'
Their inquiries had not satisfied them that such was the case. The Secretary
of State, Chamberlain, made it clear, however, that even though he and his
government felt strongly that an amendment ought to be made in this
particular, they would not attempt to withstand a genuine Australian demand.
Delegates had been next to England to represent the Australian States in
watching the handling of the constitution by the British government and
Parliament, and four of them, Barton (new South Wales), Deakin (Victoria),
Kingston (South Australia), and Fysh (Tasmania), made a very determined
fight for the bill in an unaltered shape. Dickson (Queensland) was not so
decisive. 'The delegates submit,' they wrote, 'that the federating colonies
are morally entitled to have the whole bill laid before Parliament in the
very form in which it stood when the votes of the people, affirming it,
constituted it the Australian agreement.' They protested in a vigorous and
lofty strain against having to 'choose between the howl of intervention and
the dagger of delay.' But the Imperial Government stood firmly by their
objection, and on the reference of the points dispute to a conference of
Premiers which sat in Melbourne, those gentlemen represented that if a
choice had to be made between the amendment of the bill as proposed or the
postponement, they considered that the latter course would be much more
objectionable to Australians generally than the former.' The appeal clause
was therefore amended, and a few alterations were made in other provisions
to bring the measure into harmony with the criticisms of the Imperial law
officers.

In May 1900 the bill was brought before the House
of Commons by Chamberlain, a master of the art of clear exposition, gave a
remarkably interesting account of the history of the federal movement, and a
lucid analysis of the bill itself. He described it as 'a monument of
legislative competency.' 'Considering the magnitude and the variety of the
interests that we are to deal with, the intricacy and importance of the
subjects with which the bill has to deal, I think,' he said, 'that no praise
can be too high for those whose moderation, patience, skill, mutual
consideration and patriotism have been able to produce so great a result.'
Mr. Asquith, who spoke of it as 'this great fabric which has been so
skillfully and laboriously built,' declared that 'the Australian
Commonwealth, the commonwealth of the future, is a whole which we believe is
destined to be greater than the sum of its component parts, and which,
without draining them of any of their parts, and which, without draining
them of any of their life, will give to them in their corporate unity, a
freedom development, a scale of intervals, a dignity of stature, which,
alone and separated, they could never command., which, alone and separated,
they could never command.' In July the bill passed both Houses of the
Imperial Parliament, andit became an Act on the 9th of that month.

On September 17, 1909, by a proclamation issued by
Queen Victoria from Balmoral, the Commonwealth of Australia was declared to
come into being on and after January 1, 1901. The first governor-General,
the Earl of Hopetoun, swore in his first Cabinet, that of the federal
leader, Edmund Barton, in Sydney on that date; and on May 9th of the same
year the rich, far carrying voice of the son of King Edward VII, the Duke of
Cornwall and York, rang out in the great Exhibition building, Melbourne, as
he formally opened the first Federal Parliament.

THE COMMONWEALTH

(a) Parties and Personalties

Historical events, like mountain ranges, can best
be surveyed as a whole by an observer who is placed at a good distance from
them. Out of the welter of acrimony, stratagem, ambition, generous impulses,
lofty aspirations, meanness, selfishness, patriotism, and all the other
motive forces amid which the work of the world gets itself done, emerge at
length clear to the view certain shining personalities, certain
determinations fluent in consequences, which are the stuff of which history
is made. Many people who made such noise while they strutted their hour
become happily forgotten, and many events which were responsible for large
headings in newspapers are seen to be of no particular importance. The
student of the history of the first quarter of a century of the Commonwealth
who enters upon his task a century hence will see things in different
proportion from him who makes the attempt at closer range.

But there are things which we can be sure were not
merely ephemeral, because they had to do with the laying down of main lines
of policy. Where those lines will run, how they will be deflected, whether
they will continue ultimately to good or ill results, is beyond prediction.
but they are important because they are main lines. In the First Federal
parliament (1901-3) there were three political parties: the supporters of
the Barton Government, which was protectionist; the official opposition led
by G. H. Reid, which contended for a tariff for revenue-raising purposes
only; and the Labour Party, led by J. C. Watson. The Ministry comprised five
men who had been Premiers of their States before federation - Messrs.
Forrest, Kingston, Turner, Lyne, and Fysh; in addition to Alfred Deakin, the
most brilliant orator then engaged to politics, and one whose broad culture
and personal charm won him influence beyond the strong administration with
which to commence operations under a new constitution, though it contained
too many headers to give promise of endurance. It was an army of generals,
an orchestra of conductors; and that Edmund Barton did succeed in inducing
them all to play the same tune, or fight on the same plan of campaign,
during nearly two sessions, was a remarkable achievement in leadership.

The leader of the Opposition, Reid, when nature
designed in a mood of kindness to political caricaturists, was, since the
death of Parkes, the most familiar figure in Australian affairs. His fund of
humour was not the least of his endowments; and it was employed to give
liveliness to a rare gift of dignified and impassioned eloquence, and to a
quick-witted skill in debate - which would seize upon a chance word as it
flew and return it as a weapon barbed. The Labour party counted twenty-four
members in the two Houses of Parliament. Generally they supported the Barton
Ministry, but they were an independent party, with aggressive since and a
clear if not as yet proclaimed intention to impose their own policy by the
work of a Government of their own choice upon the Commonwealth. Their
selected leader, Watson, had been a Labour member of parliament in New South
Wales, but had not secured there opportunities for distinction such as he
soon showed his capacity for winning in Commonwealth politics. A man of good
presence and urbane manners, he was a clear and incisive public speaker, and
an astute and tactful parliamentarian.

Although a Labour Government did not come into
office till 1904, he Labour Party held the key to the Australian political
situation from the very commencement of the Commonwealth. On a few issues
the opinions of its members were divided. Before the first Tariff was passed
and protection had become the assured fiscal policy of he country, some of
the, especially those from New South Wales, were strong free traders. But
whenever the party was united, its compact cluster of votes was sufficient
to ensure that what it insisted upon in legislation would become law. The
only way of negativing the party's influence would have been for the
Opposition to support the Government when the Labour party did not concur in
a ministerial proposal; but, as the main business of the Opposition was to
try to turn out the Government, such support was not likely to be accorded
often. The Labour Party held the key because on most important issues it
assisted the Barton government, which could not have carried its measures
without Labour support. Moreover, the Labour Party had developed methods of
party organizations to a pitch not hitherto known in Australian politics. On
issues which it declared to be essential to the carrying out of the
political programme its members were pledged to vote as the majority of its
members de3termined; on other issues they were free to vote according to
their personal disposition. this system to party discipline gave to it a
solid coherency which increased its strength.

Two measure of the first session were design to
give effect to what Barton described as the 'white Australia' policy. One of
these was for the purpose of preventing the immigration of coloured races,
the other for clearing the Kanakas out of the sugar plantations of
Queensland. The strength of the feeling in Australia against indiscriminate
immigration had pronounced itself very strongly since the days of the gold
diggings, and it was understood that one of the earliest acts of the Federal
Parliament would be to pass a comprehensive measure of exclusion. 'the
reason for it was frequently represented to be merely that the trade unions
objected to the incursion of coloured labour, which would lower wages and
the standard of living among the working classes. Undeniably the motive had
much weight, but the policy was supported on other grounds connected with
the general well-being. Those who had studied the consequences of the
importation of negroes to America might well stand appalled at the prospect
of saddling the Australia of the future with such a problem, and experience
of the Chinese quarters of the large cities provided ample warnings against
increasing such an element of the population.

But Barton wished to be careful not to pass
Australian legislation which might embarrass the Imperial Government. The
Secretary of State had sounded a warning in a despatch wherein he had
indicated that disqualification on the ground of race or colour was 'country
to the general conceptions of equality which have ever been the guiding
principle of British rule throughout the Empire.' In fact, however, the
principle that British possessions were at liberty to regulate their
immigration was already established law; and the method which the Barton
government proposed was adapted from an Act already in force in the colony
of Natal. That method was the education test. Power was given to require any
immigrant to submit to the test of writing not less than fifty words in any
prescribed European language. (In 1905 the Act was amended by making the
education test consist of capacity to write fifty words in 'any prescribed
language.') This gave the officials charged with the administration of the
Act scope to 'prescribe' a language in which they knew that an intending
immigrant was not proficient. In practice the test has rarely been applied
to European immigrants; the intention was to use it for the exclusion of coloured races. The administration was also enabled to admit merchants,
travellers, students, and visitors from Asiatic countries who were provided
with passports, which are valid for one year. The criticism levelled against
this method by opponents was that it did by a subterfuge what it would have
been more honest to do by the simple process of direct exclusion. that
process would have been preferred by the supporters of the policy, but it
was considered objectionable by the Imperial government, whilst the
education test was deemed by them to be the least disagreeable mode of
carrying out a policy which they did not like. The Immigration Restriction
Act became law in 1901. It has been several times amended, always with the
purpose of strengthening the system.

The legislation regarding the south Sea Islanders
was passed at the same time. The story of the importation of Kanakas to
Queensland has been related ... To a large extent the grosser evils of the
coloured labour traffic had been mitigated by improved state legislation,
but the more it was brought into comformity with the demands of
civilization, the greater the danger of Kanaka labour being made a permanent
feature of the industrial life of Queensland; and against that the
commonwealth resolutely set its face. The Pacific Islands' Labourers Act
gave power to the Government to return to their islands any any Kanakas who
should be in Australia after December 1906; but by a later Act all Kanakas
who had lived in Australia for twenty years, all who could not be returned
to their islands without risk to their lives, and all who owned land, were
allowed to remain in Australia. About 3,600 were at length deported. The
champions of the planters averred that sugar could only be grown with black
labour. Without that, a collapse of the industry was confidently predicted.
But the Federal Government imposed a heavy import duty on sugar, to secure
the Australian market for the Australian growers, and also granted bounties
to those who produced sugar with white labour only. The details of the
legislation of 1902 have been varied from time to time, but the principle of
it has been adhered to. The predictions of failure have not been fulfilled.
On the contrary, the sugar industry has prospered. The acreage under cane
and the yields of sugar have increased. Whereas in 1897-8 Australia produced
1,073,883 tons of cane, in 1922-3 the production was 2,315 tons.

The break-up of the Barton
Ministry was heralded before the close of the first Parliament by the
resignation of C. C. Kingston. a burly South Australian, whose radical
tendencies were in sympathy with the Labour party's programme in very many
respects, Kinston had, as Minister of Customs, prepared the first
protectionist tariff, and had steered it through the Legislature. The Labour
Party had pressed for a measure to establish a Commonwealth Court of
Conciliation and Arbitration in labour disputes, and Kingston had taken a
keen interest in its preparation. but he was not satisfied with the bill
after it had been reviewed by the Cabinet. It was especially inadequate from
his point of view because it did not extend to seamen engaged in the coastal
trade. His colleagues, following the Prime Minister's lead, considered that
the case of the seamen would be better provided for in a Navigation Bill;
but Kingston would not endure their exclusion from the purview of the
Arbitration Court, and left the Ministry. he was in bad health at the time,
and did not figure prominently in commonwealth politics after his
resignation; fir he was soon held in the grip of a long illness which ended
his strenuous life on May 12, 1907.

A man of haughty temper,
notwithstanding his strong democratic leanings, Kingston was at his best
intellectually as a draftsman of parliamentary bills. He spoke in a series
of emphatic spasms heaved forth with a voice of thunder; but when he took
open in hand to prepare an Act of Parliament he had command of a crisp
precision of phrase and a sure sense of the value of words, that could
express a meaning in the shortest and most unmistakable terms. Instead of
saying that any person charged with an offence against the said section in
the manner aforesaid and being without reasonable cause or manner aforesaid
and being without reasonable cause or excuse should on conviction before a
court of summary jurisdiction be liable to a fine not exceeding 20 pounds,
Kingston would write at the end of a tersely worded section, 'Penalty, 20
pounds' - and, oddly enough, neither courts nor persons affected ever had
the least doubt as to what was meant. A couple of months after Kingston's
resignation from the Ministry the Prime Minister himself retired from the
science of strife to the dignified calm of the High Court bench. An Act
constituting the Court, which was an essential element of the constitutional
fabric, had been passed, and the office of Chief Justice of Australia was
conferred upon sir Samuel Griffith, then Chief Justice of Queensland. Barton
himself took the second judgeship. the third went to Richard O'Connor, who
had represented the Government in the Senate since the commencement of
federation.

The second rime Minister was
Alfred Deakin, who at the general election, held in December, 1903, made a
valiant fight to retain the ministerial party at full strength. but the
Labour Party gained at the expense of both the other parties, and emerged
from the polls with 24 members out of 75 to the House of Representatives,
and 15 out of 36 in the Senate. It held the key to the situation still more
firmly in its grip. The Government was entirely dependent upon it for
support. If ever the party dissented from a matter of ministerial policy,
its solid phalanx had only to be increased by a few oppositionists to place
the Government in a minority, for Deakin could count no more than 27
followers, while Reid had 24.

Such a situation arose over the
Conciliation and Arbitration Bill, the measure which had nearly destroyed
the Barton Government. Deakin would not consent to the inclusion of a clause
giving the right to servants of the States to appeal to the Federal Court to
ask for an increase of pay from the Governments which employed them. Watson
and his followers insisted. Aided by a number of opposition members, they
carried the clause, and Deakin resigned (April 21, 1904). Then began a
bewildering series of changes. A citizen of the Commonwealth might any
morning have awakened wondering what government was in office now. First, a
Labour Government under Watson took office. It endured till August 12, when,
having resisted an amendment to that most explosive conciliation and
Arbitration bill, it was defeated and gave place to a Government formed from
the old Barton-Deakin party and Reid's own faithful band of Oppositionists.
Reid was Prime Minister, and his principal lieutenant was the Victorian,
Allan McLean. Deakin supported the combination till the end of the 1904
session, and enabled Reid to steer his Government into recess. But during
that recess Deakin made a critical speech, from which Reid drew the
inference that when Parliament met again he would lose the support of the
remnant who looked to the ex-Prime Minister as their leader. He could not
stand without them, so he deliberately rode for a fall. When parliament met
in June 1905, the Ministerial programme continued only one paragraph,
announcing that an Electoral Bill would be introduced. The meaning was
obvious: Reid would pass this bill, bring the session to a close, and secure
a general election. Hehoed that he would return from the polls with a party
strong enough to keep his Government in office without reliance on the
Deakin section.

But Reid was playing his cards
against two extremely quick and astute politicians in Deakin and Watson. The
former apparently thought - certainly some of his party hoped - that if he
displaced Reid's Government at this juncture with the aid of the Labour
Party, he would be able to form a coalition with Watson, and to carry out
such a policy as they could both agree upon - for on very many points
Deakin and his group were not far removed in sympathy from Watson and the
moderate section of the Labour Party. The first part of the scheme worked.
Deakin launched a motion of want of confidence and carried it with the aid
of the Labour Party, after a long debate full of vituperation, hate, malice,
and all uncharitableness. But there was no coalition. If Watson himself had
been agreeable, his party were not. They believed - and they were shown to
be right by the course of events - that if they exercised a little patience
they would soon be strong enough to form a Government of their own. But
their apple of power was not yet ripe, and it was better for them to watch
it reddening on the tree than to risk losing it by sharing the fruit with
another. Their supporters in the country were jealous of 'labour men' who
did not hold aloof from other parties. Deakin therefore, with seventeen sure
supporters in the House of Representatives, of whom seven had seats in the
Cabinet, formed a Government which relied mainly for support upon the Labour
Party.

Under Fisher's leadership the
Labour Party made the long-contemplated step forward to the attainment of
independent political power, It had supported the Deakin Ministry until
certain contentions matters of policy, to be discussed in the following
chapter, had been disposed of. Fisher then intimated, in cold terms, that
that support would no longer be accorded. With the under-pinning removed,
the government collapsed, and the first Fisher Ministry took its place.

What happened simply was that
the larger of the two parliamentary groups which had kept the Deakin
government in office now became the governing group, whilst the smaller one
helped it to keep its place by giving to the smaller one helped it to keep
its place by giving to it a sufficient though critical support. The question
was: how long this state of things would last. The Government had not a
majority of its own, and it would naturally try to secure one of the next
election. The probabilities were that it could only win extra seats at the
expense of the very members who were now its supporters, many of whom
represented constituencies wherein there was a very strong Labour element.
these member, therefore were in the position of one who should feed an
animal with the certainty that at a favourable opportunity is intended to
devour him. Politician are no more fond of being devoured than are other
people. The time for a general election was approaching, and every day made
these non-labour supporters of the Labour Government more and more uneasy.
Behind the scenes negotiations went on between some of them and the
Opposition led by Reid. Both groups thought it would be well for them to
join forces to defeat the Government.

But who was to lead the attack?
Reid was not persona grata with many of the Deakin group. His
political lieutenant, Joseph cook, was not very palatable to them either.
They must have Deakin himself. He had publicly stated that he did not intend
to take office in any Government formed as the result of a combination of
parties. but pressure was brought to bear, and Deakin's nature was
peculiarly susceptible to the pressure of friends. He was not in good
health, and would have preferred a few years of rest from leadership. but he
yielded at length, and forwarded a polite and friendly note to Fisher
informing him that the support hitherto given to his Government would be
withdrawn. Again the underpinning was removed, and another Government fell
from this cause.

The new combination, which took
office in June 1909, was known as the Fusion, or Deakin-Cook, government.
Reid was sent to London as first Commonwealth High Commissioner. But at the
general election held in April, 1910, the electors of the Commonwealth, many
of whom must have become confused by the complicated changes which have been
detailed, showed themselves adverse to the Ministry. The tide ran high and
full for the Labour party, and swept it back to parliament with a majority
in both the Senate and the House of representatives. In the former House it
captured every seat - that is, eighteen, for only half the members of the
Senate retire at a general election - and counted 23 votes in a House of 30.
In the House of Representatives it secured 42 seats for its own members, and
had in addition the benevolent neutrality of two independents.

Fisher ws thus for the second
time rime Minister. His Government was chosen on this occasion by a method
that was quite new in the history of constitutional government. The usual
mode in Australia, as in England, was for the Governor-General - ion England
the Sovereign - to send for the political leader who was indicated by the
debates and divisions to possess the confidence of the majority, to
commission him to form a Ministry, and for the rime Minister so chosen to
select his ministers. But he Federal Labour Party was differently organized
from other political parties. Its members were pledged to a political
programme drawn up by an annual Labour Conference. This Conference in 1905
had registered the decree that henceforth Labour Governments should not be
chosen by the Prime Minister, but should be selected by the full body of the
federal Labour members. Fisher, recognizing that his strength depended upon
the wide-spread and very powerful organizations of the party in the country,
initiated the observance of this rule. The members of the Government which
held office from April 1910 till the next general election in May 1913 were
therefore chosen by ballot by the party which supported them in Parliament.

The election of 1913 witnessed
the retirement from active politics of Deakin, whose health had been shaken
by the strain of so many years of official work and bitter conflict. cook
was chosen to head the Fusion party, and fortune turned a rather wry smile
upon him at the polls. So wry was it that it was hardly a smile. The Labour
party lost some seats, and cook was able to re-enter the House of
Representatives with a majority of one. that meant that when his supporters
had elected a Speaker they had no majority at all. Moreover, the Labour
Party still had an overwhelming preponderance in the Senate. So that the new
Cook Government could not carry a scrap of legislation without the grace of
its opponents, who very soon showed their determination to exert their power
to the full. The parliamentary machine was clearly unworkable under these
conditions. Cook met the situation by a bold, deliberate challenge. He was
pledged to two items of policy in regard to which the issue between his
party and Fisher's was clearly drawn. These were, a measure to restore
voting by post, which the Labour party had abolished because of allegations
of improper practices in the use of it; and a measure to destroy the
preferential treatment of trade unionists by the Arbitration Court. The two
bills were forced through the House of Representatives after very tough
fighting, and were promptly rejected by the Senate. Planning then to bring
into use the machinery of the Constitution for the removal of deadlocks, the
government forced their bills through the House of representatives again,
expressly to provoke the Senate to reject them a second time. This having
been done, the rime Minister advised the Governor-General to dissolve both
Houses.

A new Governor-Geneal, Sir
Ronald Munro-Ferguson, had only just assumed office, and the situation was a
very perplexing one for him to handle. The Labour Party denied that there
was justification for dissolving a Parliament not yet one year old, and in
which only one political leader had been tried. there was no precedent for
such a stroke in the history of constitutional government. But there was no
precedent for the situation which existed. Munro-Ferguson was himself a very
experienced parliamentarian. He was no amateur amid the whirl and clang of
party, for he had been a 'whip' in the House of Commons; and he was endowed
with a capacity for cool judgement and firm decision . Moreover, he knew
what his own powers were under the Constitution. His reading of the position
was that no satisfactory results could be expected from a Parliament such as
the last election had provided. He therefore dissolved both Houses. Events
justified the discretion which exercised. The Labour Party at the election
of 1914 was returned with an ample majori8ty in both Houses, and the third
Fisher government took office less than six weeks after the outbreak of the
great European War. The difficulties they had to face then were not
parliamentary, but imperial and international.

Fisher resigned at the end of
1915 in order to take u the duties of High Commissioner in succession to
Reid. The Prime Ministership then fell to his brilliant and energetic
Attorney-General, William Morris Hughes.

Such then, in brief, is the
history of arty warfare under the Commonwealth during its first fifteen
years. to the superficial and cynical observe it may have seemed a
'scuffling of kites and crows.' But these confused and clamorous happenings
mean t more than that. Political forces, like the forces of nature, often
tear and rend in a manner disturbing to the placid case of good-natured
equanimity. the men who fought these battles were not mere self-seeking
'caterpillars of the commonwealth,' but sincere and serious leaders of
opinion, who were contending for different sets of principles. The raid rise
of a new party - that is, of a new force - necessarily entailed a fresh
adjustment of political relations.

THE COMMONWEALTH

(b) The Wheels of Policy

Amid all the distractions which
have been described, the Commonwealth Parliament found occasion to exercise
powers in a great variety of instances, and it laid down lines of policy
which must influence Australia for many generations to come. Together with
the subjects already mentioned, there was legislation under at least thirty
of the thirty-nine paragraphs of the section of the Constitution wherein
Commonwealth powers are defined; in addition to which many laws were passed
on subjects over which the Commonwealth has exclusive jurisdiction, and some
highly impo9rtant machinery measures, to enable the processes of government
to work efficiently, were brought into being.

About the choice of the site of the federal capital
there was thorough inquiry by experts and by members of Parliament. at
first, in 1904, Dalgety, on the Monaro tableland, was selected - certainly a
beautiful site, watered by the Snowy River, ringed round with mountains, and
with the huge mass of Kosciusco dominating the landscape. but the choice did
not give pleasure to a number of influential persons in New South Wales, and
before the steps necessary for commencing to mark and the federal territory
were taken a feeling that the subject should be reconsidered gained ground
in Parliament. It was rumoured that Watson had found a place called
Canberra, some sixty miles to the north of Dalgety, and consequently nearer
to Sydney, which would meet the requirements far better. A ballot was taken
in 1905, with the result that Canberra was finally selected by the
Parliament. The New South Wales Government facilitated the acquirement by
the Commonwealth of an area of 900 square miles, with a strip of land
running down to the sea at Jervis Bay, where also two square miles of land
were ceded for the purposes of a Commonwealth port and naval base. The
required area was formally handed over by New South Wales to the Federal
government in 1909. the first meeting of the Commonwealth Parliament at
Canberra occurred in May 1922, when the new Parliament House was formally
opened by H. R. H. the Duke of York.

The question of vital interest to Western Australia
was that of the construction of a railway connecting Perth with the eastern
States. Forrest was wont to say that the principal reason which led the
western State to join the Commonwealth was that assurances were given to him
that the railway would be built. The railway, he maintained, was the
inducement offered to Western Australia, just as the possession of the
federal capital within her territory was the inducement of New south Wales.
But the Constitution imposed no obligation to construct the line, and nobody
had any authority to pledge the Commonwealth in advance to do anything which
the Constitution did not require to be done. The alleged compact may not
have weighed with the Federal Parliament, but the undesirableness of having
a whole State cut off by a great distance from the rest of the Commonwealth,
without railway connection, certainly did. If only for military reasons, it
was felt that the chain of steel should be forged. The project was promised
in the programme of the Barton government in 1901, and had been part of the
policy of every successive Ministry. The whole of the western Australian
members were continually insistent about it. At length, in 1907, an Act was
passed providing money for the survey of the 1,051 miles of route
between Port Augusta, at the head of Spencer's gulf, and Kalgoorlie, in the
western State, whence a railway already ran to Perth. The surveyors found,
as was expected, that the country to be traversed by the line is largely
unfit for human habitation; but they also found plenty of good grass land
which in favourable seasons will be valuable. Acting on the surveyor's
report, the Fisher Government, in 1911, secured the passage of a measure to
authorize the construction of the line. It was opened for traffic in 1917.

Very much of the energy, and a large expenditure of
the passion, of political parties has been devoted to efforts to amend the
Constitution. that instrument itself provides the machinery for its own
alteration. a proposed law having amendment in view must first be passed by
an absolute majority of each house of Parliament; it must then be voted upon
by the people; and if a majori8tyh of the election voting, in a majority of
the States, signify their approval, the constitution is altered accordingly.
The Labour Party, after failing to carry out its designs in reference to the
scope of the Conciliation and Arbitration Act and the control of commercial
trusts and monopolies, decided to ask the people to amend the Constitution
in two aspects mainly. First, they desired to remove the limitation which
confined the jurisdiction of the Federal Arbitration Court to industrial
disputes extending beyond the limits of any one State. They wished to give
power to the Court to act as to wages and conditions of labour and
employment in any trade, industry, or calling, including disputes which
might arise among the employees of state railways. Secondly, they wished to
have power to make laws for the control of commercial corporations, for
regulating trade and commerce within any State as well as Inter-State, and
for 'nationalizing' any industry which Parliament might declare to be 'the
subject of any monopoly.'

These propositions were first submitted to the
election in 1911, but were rejected by five States out of the six - Western
Australia being the only State favourable to the enlargement of federal
power. Regardless of this defeat, the Labour Party, considering that it
could make little headway with its policy without the proposed amendments of
the Constitution, submitted them to a second referendum in 1913. They were
then carried by three States, Western Australia, South Australia, and
Queensland - but were rejected by the other three. Failing a majority in a
majority of States, the attempt failed again. But the affirmative votes in
1913 showed a marked advance on those recorded in 1911. Then the Labour
policy was rejected by majorities of over a quarter of a million. In 1913,
however, the difference between success and failure was very narrow - less
than 30,000. Encouraged by the advance, the party nailed its flag to the
mast and announced that it would try again; and there would have been a
third referendum on the same questions at the end of 1915 but that the
outbreak of the European War induced the dropping of schemes of
constitutional alteration.

One of the strongest reasons for the formation of
the federal union was in order that a better defence system might be
adopted for Australia. Before 1901 each of the six States had its own little
military force, under the command of an officer engaged from the British
Army; and each contributed towards the up-keep of a squadron of the Imperial
Navy, under a Rear-Admiral, which was maintained in Australian and New
Zealand waters. but there was no attempt at co-operation between the six
military forces. There was no unity of command. there was no common system
of training and equipment. If Australia had had to fight for her existence,
whatever co-ordination there was would have had to be arranged at the last
moment and in the face of the enemy. The forces were militia, with a small
corps of garrison artillery in each capital city. There were also small
naval forces in some States. but these were not the main factors in the defence of Australia. Everybody knew that, regardless of geography, the
country nestled under the lee of the great and efficient navy controlled
from Whitehall.

Very
early in the history of the new Commonwealth the question of the efficiency
of the defence system and of whether it was on proper lines forced itself on
public attention. In 1903 a new naval agreement with the Admiralty had to be
made, to replace the old agreement between the Admiralty and the separate
Station. Barton had made an arrangement, subject to ratification by
Parliament, that the commonwealth should contribute a subsidy of 200,000
pounds per annum towards the cost of the squadron. He managed to carry it,
but experienced great difficulty in doing so. The idea of a subsidized navy
was objectionable to many. Had not the time arrived when Australia should
make provision for her own defence, both naval and military? This view was
emphatically urged by many influential men and journals - notably by the
Sydney Bulletin, which during the early years of federation, when policy was
being formulated, rendered memorable service by some remarkably clear
thinking and forcible writing about problems of the future. 'The alternative
to the naval tribute proposed by Mr. Barton,' wrote this journal in 1902,
'is the expenditure of a like sum of money, or if necessary a much larger
sum of money, on an Australian Navy. This Navy would, in times of peace, be
used as a training squadron for Australian men. In times of war it would be
available for the defence of Australia, and, there is no doubt, for the
assistance of Great Britain in other waters if that were called for.' That
passage embodies the view which eventually gained general acceptance. It
seemed in advance of the probabilities in 1902, but there is a very
remarkable likeness between what was then proposed and what ultimately
happened.

If any one
had predicted before 1900 that Australia, with her democratic tendencies,
would be the first portion of the British Empire to adopt compulsory
military service, he would have been deemed absurd. But, as the defence
problem was more thoroughly studied, men asked themselves why it should be
considered undemocratic to compel citizens to train themselves for the
defence of their country. The payment of taxes is not voluntary, though it
is never very agreeable. The observance of health acts and factory
regulations is not voluntary. Why, then, men said, should it be left to the
choice of the individual as to whether he should make himself efficient to
defend the country whose profession he enjoys? And, if a democracy was not
prepared to defend itself, had it any more reason to expect that it would
survive than other forms of government had done elsewhere? A remarkable
circumstance affecting the new Australian defence policy was that, although
the political parties of the country were bitterly at enmity, as shown in
the previous chapter, they all, at about the same time, became converts to
the principle of compulsory military service, and all became eager
supporters of the establishment of an Australian Navy. Indeed, after these
two things had been enacted, there was some brisk controversy as to which
party had first proposed them. Defence became a non-party issue. At one time
it seemed that there could not be such a thing as a non-party issue in
Australian politics; but these two very far-reaching changes did actually
attain to that unique distinction.

During the first eight years of the Commonwealth
its defence legislation made on radical departure from old methods. But
opinion had been ripening, and in 1809 Deakin introduced the first measure
which embodied the principle of compulsory military training. It also made
provision for establishing a military college for the education of officers.
The bill passed through Parliament, but, before the proclamation which was
to bring it into operation was issued, the Deakin Government was ejected
from office. The Fisher Ministry gave its wholehearted support to the
compulsory principle, but amended the Act of 1909, which was introduced by
Senator Pearce, who was Minister of Defence in all the Labour Governments
after the first one. Many amendments were made on the advice of Lord
Kitchener, who visited Australia at the invitation of the Commonwealth
government in 1909, made a thorough study of the strategic requirements of
the country, and inspected its troops during field manoeuvres. Lord
Kitchener prepared a report containing many valuable recommendations, which
the Government was glad to accept.

Under these Acts provision was made for training
lads in two classes, junior and senior cadets, and young men between he
ages of eighteen and twenty-six. all male persons liable for training were
required to register; and heavy penalties were imposed for evasion of
service, or, in the case of an employer, for preventing an employee from
rendering the personal service required of him. The fundamental defence Acts
of 1909-10 were amended in detail, as experience showed alterations to be
desirable; but their main principle, that of liability to be trained for
defence, became a fixed part of Commonwealth policy. a military college was
opened in 1911 at Duntroon, within Commonwealth territory, for the training
of officers, entrance to it being by competitive examination. a naval
college was also established at Jervis Bay. A wide departure was made when
the Commonwealth resolved to build a navy of its own, and to make provision
for manning it with Australian seamen. Expert opinion in Great Britain was
divided as to the expediency of having separate navies within the Empire,
but at an Imperial Defence Conference, held in London in 1909, both the
Australian and the Canadian representatives made it clear that the
commonwealth and the Dominion desired to build up what were called local
navies. The Admiralty thereupon gave its most valuable advice, and a scheme
was prepared to enable Australia to get the best service possible within her
means. Rear-Admiral Sir Reginald Henderson was sent out to examine sites for
naval bases, and to advise generally; and his report (1911) like that of
Lord Kitchener on military defence, was taken as a basis upon which the
government could proceed with a naval scheme.

Great impetus was given to the movement for
creating an Australian Navy by the revelations of the desperate efforts
which Germany was making to build a fleet of battleships which, professedly,
were designed to challenge the sea supremacy of Great Britain. In no part of
the British Empire was the significance of the development more fully
appreciated than in Australia, whose people thoroughly relized that the
safety of their country depended upon the sea power of the motherland. A
movement was started to present a Drednought to the Imperial Navy, but a
more far-sighted realization of the needs of the situation insisted that a
comprehensive naval scheme was required; and the Imperial Defence Conference
of 1909 brought forth a clear set of principles and a programme of
development which satisfied those who wished to work for an Australian Navy.
to a very large extent, therefore, the new Navy grew out of the peril
disclosed by the revelations as to German preparations. But it was
recognized quite frankly by the most thorough supporters of an Australian
naval policy that unity of direction was essential in naval warfare. It was
not desired to place up-to-date and well-armed ships in Australian waters,
and leave them there in time of war without regard to the requirements of
Imperial naval strategy. The legislation affecting the Navy therefore
provided that in time of war the squadron should automatically pass under
the control of the Admiralty; and that step was taken immediately after war
broke out between Great Britain and the Germanic Powers on August 4, 1914.

The British
government treated Australia very generously once the new policy had been
decided upon, banding over to the Commonwealth, as a free gift, the whole of
the building and equipment at the naval based at Sydney. The Admiralty also
offered to contribute a quarter of a million pounds per annum to the upkeep
of the Australian squadron, recognizing its value in the protection of
British interests in the Pacific and the East. this offer, however, was
declined, the Commonwealth preferring to defray the whole cost itself. The
Australia, flagship of the fleet, a battle-cruiser of the very rapid,
heavily-armed Indomitable type, was completed in 1913, and her
arrival in Australian waters in that year was convincing evidence that the
new naval policy was in operation. In a little over a year that policy was
justified in a very startling manner, when the great European War broke out,
and German cruisers were at large in the Pacific. Australian ports would
have been good targets for the guns of Admiral von Spee's squadron but for
the presence of the Australia, with her great superiority of speed
and gunnery. Two smaller cruisers, the Sydney and the Melbourne, also
arrived from England, where they were built, in 1913. the fight of the
former with the German cruiser Emden at Cocos Island on November 9,
1914, gave the young Australian Navy its first battle experience, and the
opportunity was very worthily seized. The Australia remained as the
most powerful vessel in the Australian fleet until 1924. Under the
conditions of the international agreement made at a conference at Washington
in 1921, the naval forces of all the Powers were reduced. The Australia
was one of the ships condemned to be destroyed. She was then obsolete as a
ship of war; but a certain sentiment attached to her as the first Australian
capital ship to take part in great naval operations. As, however, she had to
be destroyed, she was for the last time put under steam on the morning of
April 12, 1924, steered outside the heads of Port Jackson, and sunk in the
Pacific.